At the time, Robert McEwen, the father of an assault victim, was floating a six-point plan. By the following Tuesday, O'Farrell had unveiled his 12-pronged plan, although some commentators called it a ''16-point plan''. Whatever, it has lots of bullet points.

Within a few days, some of O'Farrell's prongs were not looking too sharp. For instance, members of the legal profession pointed out the dreadful injustices in the government's eight-year minimum mandatory sentences for assaults where the offender has been drinking or taking drugs.

A member of the Young Liberals drinking in a bar defends his boyfriend from taunts by a yob. The yob gets punched, bangs his head on the way down and dies. Eight years mandatory minimum for the Young Liberal. A bikie, with a criminal history, does the same thing to a rival gangster while completely sober. No eight years on the bottom for the Hells Angel.

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The removal of judicial discretions in sentencing can lead to crazy outcomes and it's all the more disturbing because O'Farrell has told us he doesn't like ''one size fits all'' solutions.

And then there is fallout for the poor old NSW Attorney-General, Greg Smith. Just before the last state election, he made it clear in an article for Bar News, a NSW Bar Association journal, that he was opposed to mandatory sentences and was ''grateful'' that they had not been introduced after Labor had promised to do so in 1995.

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In November last year, Smith was signalling a new law to cover situations where an unlawful assault causes death. It was to be based on Western Australia's one-punch law, and the Attorney-General said he wanted it to carry a maximum sentence of 20 years. No mention there of a mandatory minimum. His announcement followed Justice Stephen Campbell sentencing Kieran Loveridge, who pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Thomas Kelly in Kings Cross, to a minimum four-year term of imprisonment.

So the Attorney-General's non-mandatory sentencing law is in the dustbin, to be replaced by something he is on record as opposing. Nonetheless, it would be surprising if Smith resigned from the government on a point of principle.

Former NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery in the Herald on Wednesday pooh-poohed another of O'Farrell's prongs: the removal of voluntary intoxication by drugs or alcohol as a mitigating factor in sentencing. The ex-DPP was surprised: ''It is not presently a mitigating factor under sentencing legislation and courts do not excuse offenders just because they are drunk.''

There are other criminal law fixes tossed into the cocktail: increasing maximum sentences to 25 years for the illegal supply and possession of steroids; increased on-the-spot fines for antisocial behaviour; increased maximum penalty (up by two years) where drugs or alcohol are an aggravating factor in violent crimes; and enabling police to impose a 48-hour precinct ban for ''troublemakers''.

Really, is a testosterone-fuelled drunk going to be deterred because extra maximum sentences are on offer? As Cowdery said: ''There is plenty of evidence that increases in penalties for offences do not produce corresponding deterrent effects.'' And that goes for mandatory minimum sentences as well.

The law and order chest-beating will not of itself solve the problem, which leaves us with the few remaining prongs that seek to affect the supply of alcohol.

The Newcastle-style, 1.30am lockouts with the tap turned off in pubs, clubs, taverns, etc, at 3am has the liquor industry jumping. It certainly seems to have had a mitigating effect on drunken sprees in Newcastle and it would directly affect the handful of pubs that trade for 24 hours.

But it seems a weird sort of inhibitor. If you squeeze past the front door at 1.29am, you still have a solid 1½ hours of boozing before the grog is switched off. After that, it's just you and the poker machines. Risk-based licensing fees for premises with poor compliance also seem faint-hearted. Only the other day, the Herald reported that the Bada Bing strip joint in Darlinghurst Road had failed to register a single strike under the three-strikes law, despite a heap of nasty incidents and violation of its licence. Apparently these infractions did not quality as ''strikes''.

After Kelly's death in July 2012, there was a big talkfest at the Sydney Town Hall with all the ''stakeholders''. As usual, Don Weatherburn, of the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, was the most insightful. His study of 391 young people surveyed in 2011 found that only 7 per cent had been refused a drink by bar staff when they had shown signs of intoxication. This finding showed that the code of conduct dressed up as the ''responsible service of alcohol'' was largely ignored by the industry.

At the time of Kelly's death, not one of the 193 licensed premises in the Cross was listed in the three-strikes register kept by the Office of Liquor Gaming and Racing.

The response from Paul Nicolaou, prominent Liberal Party member and fund-raiser, and chief executive of the NSW Australian Hotels Association, was to say that we have ''the toughest legislation in Australia and you can't enter licensed premises if you are drunk''.

The enforcement of existing licensing conditions is a factor that has gone missing in action, which suggests that most of O'Farrell's prongs are so much frou-frou.

And that goes for the new, statewide 10pm closing time for bottle shops and liquor stores. Admittedly, that's an inconvenience for someone who is desperate for a bottle of McWilliam's cream sherry at 10.05pm but, with a bit of careful planning, most semi-conscious citizens would have stored a case of their favourite tipple under the bed for just such emergencies.